North Carolina Now; North Carolina Now Episode from 11/04/1996

It's Monday November 4th tonight. The final round of campaigning in North Carolina now. Good evening everyone I'm Marina mature a welcome to this election eve edition of North Carolina now. By this time tomorrow the polls will be closed and we will be anxiously awaiting the final tabulations of the voting. Tonight's program will focus on tomorrow's election as the candidates spent today crisscrossing the state for their last round of campaigning. Shannon victory will profile the Senate race Bob Garner examines efforts to reform campaign spending. And in our interview segment we will focus on the three constitutional amendments on tomorrow's ballot. But first to the campaign trail in this final day of the U.S. Senate campaign Republican Senator Jesse Helms and Democratic candidate Harvey

Gantt are sprinting across the state trying to reach as many undecided voters as possible. The latest polls show about 10 percent of North Carolina voters are still undecided about who they'll vote for in this race. And the Shannon Vicary reports that 10 percent may decide who becomes North Carolina's next senator. Speaking to hundreds of supporters in Raleigh last Thursday Democratic candidate Harvey Gantt energized the crowd and while his message Royce the familiar kitchen table themes he stressed throughout this campaign. It also contained something new a call to action for Tarheel Democrats. We got to talk to our coworkers. We've got to talk to those who we just bumped into on the street. We got to get busy on our telephones and let folks know that there's an election coming on Tuesday. And Democrats have the right message.

They have the right this is where Senator Jesse Helms has a similar message for Republicans. Polls show Gantt and Helms in a tight race and with both Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole and Republican gubernatorial candidate Robin Hayes trailing in the polls. Helms has to make sure Republicans don't stay home on Election Day. And then right away if you were one of us you know no feeling about it. But there's one group I'm here with. Yes that's why Helms decided to pull out the heavy hitters last Thursday former President George Bush and Elizabeth Dole made a special campaign stop in Raleigh to publicly add their support to Helms. I think there is a crying need for integrity and honor in public service and none has stood for that more than Jesse Helms of North.

God bless you Jesse. North Carolina need you and America needs Jesse Helms. But Dan also has his own political superstar and Tipper Gore the wife of Vice President Al Gore is urging Tarheel voters to make Gant their next U.S. senator. Here in is the right person at the right place at the right time. And when you elect him on November the 5th and send Harvey and Sandy to Washington you will be electing a United States senator that you can be proud to represent. North Carolina passed the year 2000. Thank you. Will Dan and Helms have crisscrossed the state over the last two weeks trying to reach as many voters as possible. But despite the frantic pace of these last few days the majority of this campaign has not been out on the campaign trail. Instead this match up has been more

visible. It was political ads where Helms and Gant have repeatedly attacked each other on a variety of issues. Helms has hit Gant by questioning his stance on same sex marriages and welfare reform. And so what we've really seen is a battle to create an image for Harvey Gantt and Senator Helms is trying to create a negative image and Gant is trying to create a positive image in 1086 Harvey Gant used as minority status to purchase interest in a TV station under false pretense. Helms is lightest attack ad evokes the question of race in the ad Helms claims Gant has benefited from his minority status. The ad takes the same tone as a series of ads Helms used back in 1998 raising once again the issue of race in this campaign. I think this is the race card. I think that the senator will play it in just this way. That is I don't think it will get more blatant than this sad but I think this ad clearly plays on race as an issue and also

as a factor in the way people vote when a black candidate is running. But unlike 1990 Gantt has remained relatively silent about this and instead he has used his airtime to attack Helms on the issues of Medicare and Social Security. Holmes has responded by describing dance as a tax and spend liberal I don't think he'd run for the Senate I think he's running for two fer all he wants to do is human way something of a sham fight here. But for the most part Helms has ignored Gant. He's refused offers for debates and even joint appearances. Instead he spent time shoring up his traditional bases of support. Let me tell you this. I understand you actually have to talk to the 1972 that I would do the best I could to stand up for the farmers in the North Carolina and Jack grove right now. Yes but. Thanks. So it's now up to the voters of North Carolina to

decide if that's enough to earn Senator Helms a fifth term in the U.S. Senate. Now Senator Helms and Harvey Gantt had some help on this final campaign day. Former President Jimmy Carter spent the day on the campaign trail for Gant while Senator Helms campaigned with Assistant Senate Majority Leader Don Nickles of Oklahoma. Well still more politics ahead on North Carolina now with a look at efforts to reform campaign financing. But before we get to that let's turn it over to Michel Louis for a summary of today's statewide headlines. Good evening Mitch. Thanks Maria. Good evening everyone. Well politics tops our news this evening. North Carolina appears to be leaning in favor of casting its electoral college votes for Republican presidential challenger Bob Dole. A Mason-Dixon tracking poll shows Dole trailing the president with 84 likely electoral college votes to Clinton's 176 States not showing an overwhelming majority one way or the other are identified as leaning among leaning states Dole has 33 votes

including 14 from North Carolina. Clinton has 138 according to the poll President Clinton has well over the 270 Electoral College votes necessary for re-election. The gubernatorial candidates took advantage of this final day of campaigning to try and garner as many last minute votes as possible. Incumbent Governor Jim Hunt appeared at a noontime Democratic Party rally in Raleigh. He encouraged voters not to be complacent and get out and vote. Meanwhile Republican challenger Robin Hayes also stopped in the triangle to reach voters one of seven stops he made today. Hayes told supporters it's time for a change and accuse the governor of hiding from his record. Recent polls show had going into Election Day with a sizable lead over Hayes. The State Division of water quality is taking steps to prevent hog lagoons spills in some eastern North Carolina counties that have vision has granted requests from farmers and Duplin Onslow and Pender counties to pump swine waste on just saturated fields. Some of the waste will flow into nearby waterways. But officials say

spraying the waste is preferable to a lagoon rupture. Many hog farmers are having trouble because of heavy rains this year. The Environmental Protection Agency is considering a crackdown on air pollutants blanketing some areas of North Carolina. New regulations could affect smog and microscopic particles in the air but potentially increasing the number of cities that must reduce emissions. Mandatory vehicle emissions testing in more counties could follow as well as increased anti pollution equipment for new industries. The regional supervisor of the state Division of air quality says it would be difficult for more urban areas such as Charlotte the triangle and Greensboro to reduce their emissions of such pollutants. Looking ahead to tomorrow's election day forecast Tuesday temperatures will reach highs somewhere in the mid to high 60s in most places mountain temperatures will hover around the 60 degree mark partly to mostly sunny skies are predicted for tomorrow. In business news a major bank merger announced today will give the companies involved the largest share of deposits in North

Carolina West and Salem based Southern National and white phal based United Carolina bank shares Corp. will form a financial institution with more than 25 billion dollars in assets. The newly merged banks would still be smaller the nation's bank First Union and what Kovio the merger makes U.S. be the first of North Carolina's mid-sized banks to be bought. Department store giant J.C. Penney's has agreed to a new deal to buy the Eckerd corporation. The deal is for nearly 2.6 billion dollars in cash and stock Eckerd operates over 700 stores which had sales of more than 5 billion dollars last year. J.C. Penney purchased 200 rite aid stores last month and acquired the Raleigh based car drug chain in 1995. And now for a look at what happened on Wall Street today. Among the myriad of candidates and issues that will be on the ballot this coming Tuesday there are three

constitutional amendments up for your consideration. The gubernatorial veto a victim's rights amendment and the alternative punishments Amendment. The North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research has recently compiled a report on the pros and cons of these amendments. Here to fill us in on the details of that report is Rand Coble. He is the executive director of the Center for Public Policy Research Rand Good to see you again. Thank you for inviting. Before we get into the exact details of this report why don't you begin by telling us why of all the things that are going to be on the ballot this November election why you picked these three constitutional amendments. Well of course we do it to the legislature and we do a lot of work on issues but we felt like this was the thing that's most likely to be ignored that the voters were likely to walk in. Think about what they were going to do when voting for president and vice president on down the ballot and then all of a sudden found these constitutional amendments and be surprised. So it was more just where the voters need some information about some topics that they are likely to have not heard about and in other places.

Let's start with the first one and that's a given a tour you'll be told that's the one that we've heard the most about the pros and the cons. You were the author of the prose on that side why don't you hit some of the highlights there. Well I think the one big argument an obvious argument is obviously North Carolina is the only state without a veto and so if it's worked well at the federal level and in 49 other states what makes us so different. A second argument there is to really balance the playing field between the governor and the legislature to give the governor. And I think also to really put the governor on record on a lot of issues right now the governor can pretty much sort of. Pick and choose on which issues he or she puts themselves in in the public forum. And then I think the third argument in favor of it is North Carolina historically has had a fairly weak governor in terms of formal powers that is that our governor shares the ballot with nine other statewide elected officials which is more than all but five other states in the country. The governor has no

veto power and even if this passes it's not going to be as strong as 43 governors have a line item veto power. And so those are some of the the pros of veto power for the governor. And the cons would be I think the cons are sort of the old aphorism if it ain't broke don't fix it. You know North Carolina has a reputation for a very clean government and being the leader in the south and it's like this system while it's different from the other states. Why alter it. Another argument that I think is a legitimate worry is will it poison the well of relationships between the governor and the legislature that is the veto is a pretty big stick for the governor to sort of hold over the legislature and say if you don't do this I'm going to veto the bill. The governors nationally don't use the veto but about 5 percent of the time they do so 5 percent of all the bills passed. It is very difficult for a legislature to override them. And so it is a big stick and that is what people are worried about in their homes Rights Amendment you give us a

brief overview of what this amendment is calling for. Well the Amendment gives people the right to in effect notice that when a criminal that has committed a crime against the victim is about to be pardoned or their sentence commuted or some way the right to be present in court the right to be heard at sentencing. In effect the right to be present all through the process. And it gives victims a place in the Constitution the same way that criminals rights are protected in our Constitution as well. But there is an argument that is doing it in a constitutional amendment. The way to go about it and that's that's one of the arguments that's really want to come on says that all of these rights will have to be defined by state statute and that there is not a need for a constitutional amendment which is pretty serious business. One of the other cons is costs that when you start providing notice to these various points in the process to the victims of crime that that cost is going to add up. The

estimates are pretty soft but estimate that the writer for US uses 10 million dollars in terms of providing those rights. So that difference between what you put in state statutes and what you put in the Constitution is is a point of contention between the two sides. People are not arguing as much about doing more for victims of crime. But the question is do you need to do it in the Constitution. Give us a quick overview of the alternative punishment Amendment. Well if you were to look at the state constitution today you would see that it says judges can sentence criminals to imprisonment to death to a disqualification from office. What it doesn't mention is a lot of things that judges are already doing like sentencing to electronic house arrest or to probation or to restitution or community service programs. The propellants are a little worried about in effect judges doing things that aren't sanctioned in the Constitution

and both sides sort of say well you know if they're already doing it why do we need this constitutional amendment. But people are worried about making legal what is already going on in terms of the Constitution. The original amendment came during a time where North Carolina had a lot of problems with criminals. Prisons were so full that criminals were saying well I can get out faster by opting for prison and getting quick release because our prisons are so full then I can get free from an alternative punishment like community service. And so at one time criminals were actually opting for prison. We've built up a lot of prison cells in the last few years I think 6000 and 1995 alone and so that's not as much a problem anymore and that's yet another reason that people are saying that they're opposed to it. The proponents are. People who think that we should do more in the alternative punishments area more community service more restitution and use our

prisons for the most severely most severe offenders. Well Rand Coble it's an interesting report and it'll be interesting to see how it comes out on Tuesday when everybody votes. It will be fascinating the first time we've had constitutional moments in a while. Thank you for being here tonight. The election season always brings talk of campaign finance reform bipartisan negotiations at the federal level never materialized as promised and here in North Carolina campaign finance reform bill died in the state Senate during the last

session. Even in the face of dramatically spiraling campaign spending in the state as Bob Garner reports coming up with the reform plan acceptable to all sides is a very tough assignment. In 1994 candidates for statewide office raised nearly four times as much in campaign contributions as they had 10 years before with one dollar in three coming from political action committees. Total giving for legislative races alone increased nearly threefold between 1993 and one thousand ninety five. While if you call it out and out vote buying some say the problem is more subtle and ultimately more corrosive. Legislators from the sun and the concerns of those voices they can hear. And today the voice of the ordinary North Carolinian is being drowned out by special interests with bundles of money to spend. The problem isn't just with special interests. Ninety percent of the total private contributions in 94 came from just three hundred fifty families. The current system which places the agenda of that 1 percent of voters far above that

of the other ninety nine percent of us is in every way against the spirit and intent of democracy. Objections are being raised not only by ordinary voters but also by lobbyists like Bibi Hawk Johnson who concedes that access to lawmakers is basically for sale. I don't want this special interest to be able to control the government and I know I'm a special interest and I represent special interest but I think it's wrong if we have all the controls of the numbers who are writing our laws. It ought to be open everybody do the same thing. That isn't an entirely unselfish view. Johnson who represents Philip Morris tobacco among other clients says lobbyists as individuals are swamped by requests for contributions. This is one day of a list facials of political money. And here I'm Celeste patient for the last three weeks. A lot of money being asked all I get tabus I'm not asking to give money.

I'm asking for relief from giving money and all of my friends in the lobbying business is doing the same thing. We have to see one solution that's been proposed is to reduce the maximum contribution in North Carolina from $4000 per election to a smaller amount. But Johnson says a person ought to be able to give as much as he wants. We've put limits of any kind on public speech. We are abridging the First Amendment of the Constitution is often a difficult a right a political reform law that doesn't trump all the First Amendment. Johnson adds that further limiting contributions also makes it harder for challengers to defeat incumbents. Many who don't want spending limits favor greater disclosure of the occupations and financial interests of those giving and receiving campaign contributions and in making this information more accessible to the public perhaps by a computer. Johnson prefers this approach as does state Republican chairman Robert Wilkie as

a part of it. Believe strongly in freedom we we do not want any more curtailment of the political speech rights enshrined in the First Amendment. We believe in full disclosure and that is the way that we want to go in terms of any campaign finance laws. Senator Helms will tell you that most of our congressional delegation will tell you that there are also concerns over the huge loopholes for gifts given to political parties then passed directly on to the candidates so-called soft money on which there are no limits. There are also no limits on the amount groups can collect from members to run their own campaigns against certain candidates and party line. Like the ads the AFLCIO has been running against Republicans. It's our job to expose exactly what the other side is doing and we have to do that through a massive education campaign of our own.

In a move to diffuse this kind of political arms race some are proposing public financing of North Carolina campaigns. Twenty two states now have some form of public financing including Florida and Kentucky. A proposal will be introduced in the next legislative session by Democratic state senator with Goli of Durham. It stipulates that candidates who volunteer only accept spinny limits should receive public money equally. The average amount spent campaigning for that particular office in the last two election cycles. The thing that you have to do is you have to make this a workable option for people who are in office. Because if it's not then I vote against it I won't go anywhere. And what I like about the proposals that says that we're going to allow people the opportunity to opt in except the spending limits but have enough money to really be competitive. And if your opponent starts going above that limit will match a dollar for dollar up to double whatever the initial allocation was. Nobody says the measure would level the field between incumbents and challengers. Folks who give money now the private folks who give money to favor incumbents this bill would help

folks who are not incumbents have a reasonable chance to raise enough money to run a good competitive race and I think that's also how democracy is supposed to work. The senator also has his own view on the First Amendment question. If you have two people running for office and one of them can spend a quarter million dollars because they have it and another person works hard just to spend 10000 or 15000 dollars that the two candidates are both there. But one literally drowns out the other one in terms of the voice being heard. And and so I think that if we were serious about the First Amendment being that people can have a voice and have a chance to be heard that that pushes back to consider a proposal like the one I've made Billy points out that public financing has been working in presidential campaigns for 20 years except for the large amounts of soft money spent by both major parties. His own proposal would limit the amount of soft money a candidate could receive from his or her party to 10 percent of the amount awarded from state funds. He says the measure would cost an estimated 12 million dollars a year.

It's interesting to note that during recent years the number of state House races in which the winning candidate spent more than $100000 has tripled. Now here is some information that may be helpful to you as you head out to your polling place tomorrow. The polls will be open at 6:30 a.m. and will close at 7:30 in the evening. You don't need to present any identification but you will need to confirm your name and address and a word about the ballot. A number of different ballot methods will be used statewide but regardless of where you are the information on the ballot will be much the same. The order of the candidates will be consistent with a Democratic candidate listed first followed by the Republican Libertarian and Natural Law Party candidates. The presidential options will include Reform Party candidate Ross Perot. Now following your county office races there will be three constitutional amendments and two statewide bond referendums. You may take as much time as you feel necessary to cast your vote and you can bring along any notes or any other material to assist you in making your choices. It is

an exceptionally long ballot this year so please take the time needed to go through the entire ballot. Before we head out of here tonight State Representative Foyle Hightower who was referred to in last week's North Carolina people program has requested that we clarify that he is in favor of the highway bongs referendum on tomorrow's ballot. So please make sure that you vote tomorrow. And then turning to you and CTV for comprehensive election coverage starting with North Carolina now at 7:30. Enjoy your evening everyone. We'll see you tomorrow. Good night.